


Ocean's Lament

by cathtice



Category: Werewolf: The Apocalypse, White Wolf, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Father-Son Relationship, Fianna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 12:22:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10020611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathtice/pseuds/cathtice
Summary: Not all tragedies are about death and destruction; and not all tales of the Garou are about glorious battles.





	

Delwyn John, Great Is The Voice, is the Eldest Galliard of the Garou Nation in Albion; he's a 60-something Fianna, and very much the father figure of the Anglesey caern. Davey John, Ghost Of A Song, is the son of his old age, maybe in his late twenties; an Athro Galliard and the Caern Warder - a traditionally Ahroun role. 

Delwyn, when you meet him, is resounding. He's a melodic old bard, whose voice fills whatever room he's in with tales and poetry and music. He's clearly trained as an actor and orator as well as being the receptacle for lore, history and wisdom; and the only person whose performance he is ever harsh about is Davey's. This is, in no small part, because Davey is almost silent. He's monosyllabic at the best of times and turns to his Beta, a valley girl named Angharad (called 'Olwyn Bach'; 'Little Olwyn', from a tale about a giant's daughter, because she's genuinely like 6'4 in her socks, with a personality to match her height) for actual communication. Davey's pack aren't Elders possibly partly because he refuses to sing their deeds.

It's obvious to everyone that there's conflict between the father and son - Davey refuses to say 'my father' at all, referring to Delwyn by name or deed name when he has to, and Delwyn practically winces whenever Davey 'performs'. But no one really talks about it - it's just... how they are.

The thing is, though, that there's a reason for this, and it's awful and human and obvious...

The first thing you need to know to understand it is that Delwyn went through a late First Change. He was born in the mid-1950s as part of a strongly Kin family, under a Galliard moon, so his family let him have his head a little when it came to singing and performing, just in case he'd change - the alternative, at that time, was going down the mines or farming. This let him stay in school till he was 16, and made sure he caught the acting bug. By then, while he hadn't Changed, he was utterly caught up in the idea of being on the stage, and he managed to get out of Wales. It took him years, but he got into the RSC, and acted on stage in Stratford.

It wasn't for very long. His First Change was a shock, to say the least - while it was relatively discreet and no one got hurt, he knew what it meant. He handed in his notice and headed back to Anglesey. Once he'd passed his Rite of Passage, he went to Ireland, to learn about being a Galliard and a Druid at Silver Tara, the home of the greatest of the loremasters in the country. Something happened there - he's still on bad terms with Deirdra Well-Singer, one of his fellow students - and he went back to Wales, to carry on playing the role of Galliard of the Nation.

He was a Fostern when the opportunity came up. A new version of Under Milk Wood was being staged. He left his pack and his sept, and auditioned and won the part of the narrator; and for a few glorious months, he hummed and sang and orated his way around the stage, feeling the limelight in his bones.

Then, when the run was over, he went back to Anglesey. He never again tried to act professionally; the only part he played was Garou. 

He spent the next twenty years steadily growing in gravitas and strength and power as a performer; and watching those others around him grow up and mature and develop and die. Bryn turned from a boy ten years younger than him to the Dragonsbane himself, fighting to drag the Ocean's Lament upward and away from the mad High King's distrust; Stellus Aurelianus, the eldest of House Aurelianus, the last of the Elder Silver Fang Lupus in the country, and Delwyn's packmate, died with his teeth deep in a Wyrm creature's throat, defending the caern.

But then he found his wife, and then his wife gave him the greatest gift anyone could - a child. He loved Davey more than he'd ever realised he could love; with all the fierceness and all the vulnerability that he couldn't dare pour into this role he lived. People depended on him to be strong, to be knowledgeable, to be honourable and wise and glorious - he could never just be a person to them. But this, his little son, this boy he could laugh with, and play with, and teach to sing silly songs without worrying about whether his performance was going to dishearten someone or cause them to be confused or alarmed. He was the most important person in Delwyn's world. All Delwyn ever wanted was for Davey to get what he could never have; a life, to do whatever he wanted with - to tread the boards, to hold an audience in the palm of his hands, to sing to the aching, echoingly full concert bowl and feel the crowd respond and thrill and cheer, to feed on emotion and give them the feeling back doubled and redoubled. 

And Davey grew up secure and wondering and laughing, a Welsh boy tumbling wild across Ynys Mon, singing to the hills and laughing at their echo, with a voice that rivalled his father's and a world full of the knowledge that no Galliard was greater than Great Is The Voice, the greatest poet, the wisest storyteller, the most honourable tale teller and the most glorious of all the Garou in the Nation. All Davey ever wanted was what his father had; a life, to do whatever he wanted with - to be the son of the greatest Galliard in the Nation, to stand beside his father the hero, to fight back the corruption and fear of the dark with voice and klaive and claw and song.

And Delwyn hoped and hoped; and Davey hoped and hoped - and one of them got what he wanted. Davey went through First Change, and stood before his father in all the pride of his gangly teenage war form - and saw his father frown.

After that, Delwyn was harsher on Davey than any of his other students. Nothing Davey could do was good enough; no song was perfect enough, no feat brave enough. Davey stopped talking, after a little while; and he never sang again. He fought all the harder, though - to prove that if he wasn't good enough to be a Galliard like his father, he was still good enough to be a Garou like his father. 

It wasn't enough. Because every moment that Davey tried to live up to his father's legend, Delwyn tore him down. Part of Delwyn whispered that his son wasn't good enough, could never be good enough - but part of him, that he refused to recognise and admit, part of him knew that if Davey was ever good enough to fight and sing as a Garou, he'd be good enough to die as a Garou. 

The Nation took away every dream Delwyn ever had. Now, it was taking away his son, his only perfect creation; and all of it was because his son believed that Delwyn actually was the part that he was playing. 

And Davey fought harder and harder to prove himself - despite his father, because of his father; because the only thing he's ever wanted is for Delwyn to approve of him again. Because Davey knows what every single other Garou will always know - that Delwyn really is as good as the act he's putting on. That he deserves his Wisdom and his Honour and, yes, his Glory. That he's not just fretting and strutting his hour on the stage, but instead is something like a legend - he has a gift, to feed others hope and fire and dreams. 

Davey could have done that too; but Delwyn poisoned him out of love and fear and desperate, painful emptiness, and doesn't even recognise what he's done. Instead, Davey, an Athro and not even thirty, and never going to be an Elder while he sings his own tales (chokes out ten words of bare, downplayed fact), will live and die with the name the Sept gave him; the Ghost Of A Song, hungry for something he can never have.

And maybe one day Delwyn will realise what he's done. And maybe one day Davey will forgive him.

Till then, they're nearly the most glorious, honourable, wise Galliards that the Fianna have ever bred; and they are killing each other by inches.


End file.
